This research analyzes the scientific research carried out during Italian colonialism by the fascist regime in Libya between 1922 and 1943 with particular focus on environmental sciences such as agronomy and agriculture. Colonial Libya was a crucial laboratory for projects of colonial exploitation, fascist ideology and the management of nature. Since the conquest of the country in 1911, the Italian government aimed at transforming the environment of the “fourth shore” into a settlement-colony. Under the fascist regime, Libya was meant to become a colonial Lebensraum, a process culminated in 1939 with the transformation of the country into Italian metropolitan territory. Yet the wider ecological significance of colonization is unknown. What role did the fascist regime envision for the production of environmental knowledge, the management and the exploitation of natural resources in its imperialistic plans? What ecological tools did fascist colonizers use in order to transform local society and displace the native population? How was fascist environmental knowledge produced in Libya? My research focuses on the colonial institutes of agricultural research that enabled and implemented fascist Italy’s natural and social engineering projects in Libya. In particular, the Istituto Agronomico d’Oltremare (Agronomic Institute for Oversea), directed by Armando Maugini for forty years, had a key role from the beginning of the colonial period well into the post-colonial era. Historians have consistently overlooked the production of colonial environmental knowledge and its circulation between colony and metropole due to their focus on political and military events. Environmental history dealing with the Maghreb and the Middle East has explored environmental imaginaries rather than practices. Libya in particular has been neglected so far, despite its role as an ecological borderland between the Sahara and the Mediterranean, the Maghreb and Egypt. On the other hand, historiography on Italian fascism has recently shed light on its totalitarian project of mastering not just human beings, but also nature. Nonetheless, the colonial dimension of this process remains unexplored. I aim to connect environmental and political history by analyzing the colonial threat to an ecosystem, its resistance and the production of ecological knowledge to bridge the ecological history of Libya, the making of environmental research, and the role of fascism in this dynamic. Did the ecological interaction between Italy and Libya give rise to a hybrid Mediterranean environment? Is it possible to write an environmental rather than a military history of the colonial impact between fascism and Libyan society?